Android Developer Tutorials and Blog

Recently I’ve needed to test on a vast range of devices, but we don’t have the physical devices available. I’m always wary of the emulators because they can’t show defects with the software that manufacturers/operators put on top of vanilla android. One thing the emulators are good for is testing the different pixel densities that devices can range in as well as portrait/landscape with these densities.

I’ve already started making a list of devices that will fall into these buckets: see here. and below is a list of different emulator setups to try and catch any bugs that may appear in one specific density.

You can create new virtual devices (emulators) using the Android AVD Manager. This tool is accessible in eclipse / intellij and through the android_sdk/tools folder. Below is how you’ll be creating them.

I was wondering — these are great for AVD — but what about in the Graphical Layout Editor itself? You can create “custom devices” in there and I’ve been pulling my hair out for a “custom device” profile for the S3 for the Graphical Layout Editor in Eclipse… any ideas there?